7/11 blasts: LeT man handed over to Maharashtra

Lashker-e-Tayiba operative Sheikh Naeem, arrested by the Border Security Force in West Bengal while trying to sneak into India with three suspected militants, was on Sunday handed over to Maharashtra Police for further interrogation in connection with the July 11 train bombings in Mumbai.

CID'S DIG (Operations) Rajeev Kumar said that a team from Maharashtra reached Kolkata early Sunday for taking Naeem alias Sameer to Mumbai.

Naeem had made some sensational revelations on the bombings on Mumbai's commuter trains in his statement during a narco test, Kumar told PTI.

The LeT man was also stated to have made some confessions regarding his involvement in the blasts. Kumar, however, declined to divulge more details.         

Naeem and three other LeT operatives, who had planned a major strike in Jammu and Kashmir and arrested by the BSF from Bongaon in North 24-Parganas district on April 1, were remanded to 14 days' police custody by a local court on April 4.

They were handed over by the BSF to the district police, which in turn passed them over to the CID after being sent to Kolkata.

Two of the four, who had Pakistani passports on them, were Md Yunus, a LeT suicide squad member, and Abdullah Khan. Both were Pakistani nationals. Of the two others, Muzaffar Ahmed was from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir and Naeem from Aurangabad in Maharashtra.

"Sameer hails from Maharashtra's Aurangabad district and we feel he can give some more information regarding the July 11 blasts. Hence, we will applied for his custody," Anti-Terrorist Squad chief K P Raghuvanshi told PTI in Mumbai.

Apart from the bombings, the ATS is interested in looking into the 'Aurangabad angle,' Raghuvanshi said.

Three of the four arrested had procured fake I-cards from an agriculture university in Kanpur. The SIM cards of their mobile phones were missing. The police suspected that they had thrown them away just before their arrest.         

They were experts in handling sophisticated weaponry and were on their way to Jammu and Kashmir for a 'major operation,' according to what they had told the interrogators.

The four had arrived in Dhaka from Karachi in the last week of March and then crossed over to India at Petrapole in North 24-Parganas district.

The state government, after furnishing a report on the arrest to the Union Home Ministry, has intensified vigil along the border to check movement of Pakistan-based rebels.